In 2018, Cornell University Professor Robert Howarth wrote about fossil gas being promoted as a bridge fuel. He said that while a shift to gas from other fossil fuels reduces carbon dioxide emissions, he warned that methane emissions increase, and methane is 100-fold more powerful as a greenhouse gas than is carbon dioxide.
Dr. Howarth was targeted for criticism by people defending the oil and gas industry. Evidence mounts that Howarth and colleagues have been correct. July 13, 2023, the New York Times reported on a peer-reviewed study that involved researchers from Brown, Harvard, and Duke Universities and NASA:
Natural gas, long seen as a cleaner alternative to coal and an important tool in the fight to slow global warming, can be just as harmful to the climate, a new study has concluded, unless companies can all but eliminate the leaks that plague its use...
The bottom line: If gas leaks, even a little, “it’s as bad as coal. It can’t be considered a good bridge, or substitute.”
…[The study] adds to a substantial body of research that has poked holes in the idea that natural gas is a suitable transitional fuel to a future powered entirely by renewables, like solar and wind...
And there’s mounting evidence that methane is… leaking from gas systems in far larger quantities than previously thought. Sensors and infrared cameras are helping to visualize substantial leaks of methane from oil and gas infrastructure, and increasingly powerful satellites are detecting “super-emitting” episodes from space.
Fossil gas companies and governments like those in British Columbia and Alberta have been disinterested in accurate measurements of methane leaks. With subsidies and reduced rates of payments for public resources, they remain committed to increasing production.
BC NDP has seen fossil gas production grow by almost half since the last full year of BC Liberal rule, all the while promoting “clean energy” policies.
The Narwhal reported on peer-reviewed research that showed Oil and gas facilities in B.C. are producing 1.6 to 2.2 times more methane pollution than current federal estimates.
But a wave of new satellite monitoring capability may change things. Soon, fossil gas promoters in industry and governments will have nowhere to hide.
Categories: Fossil Gas
in-sights.ca 
The early reference Norm made regarding a new paper accepted for publication in the Harvard Environmental Law Review towards
charges of homicide could become a reality when peer review studies
as mentioned here are made public. It could get to a point whereby
government officials could be included also if loss of life due to climate
starts to really escalate and the government refuses to act on the real situation at hand.
At this point that almost seems like our only recourse. Unfortunately
the mouse will not act independently (us) until the lion (USA) roars.
Case in point (regarding the lion) we are still on hold about day light savings time yet we had no problem going metric.
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Good points Norm. As a former government and private sector economist I have had personal experiences with my supervisors not wanting me writing about reality. Most notable was as chief economist at the UN organisation, ICAO.
My task was to complete a report on the issues affecting international air travel to and from South America. From the evidence of each country’s income distribution charts, it was clear that large portions of the populations lacked the financial capacity to travel by air to and from other continents, unlike the consumption rates per capita for the populations of North America and Europe.
My director refused to allow me to write a chapter on this topic so the final report pretended those folks in SA were rich enough to travel like Europeans etc..
This was not an isolated personal example of being required to write fiction for the people who remained unidentified to avoid accountability. This was/is why John Perkins wrote ” The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man”.
Here in BC we had this same fiction used to support BC Hydro’s forecasts of demand at the beginning of the present century. In 2011 I asked the BCH Director of Forecasting why they were using population grow forecasts that exceeded Stats Can. projections by more than double. His answer was that he was under orders to use a private source values for population and GDP projections. In other words none of that was of his doing but his name was on the final report.
This is a more wide-spread practice than most Canadian’s realise.
Erik
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If the problematic methane was leaking from the domiciles of thee and me, and there was a way for government or fossil fuel corporations to extract a price for it from us, methane would immediately be accurately detected to minute traces from space or anywhere else the latest technology could be employed.
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